


Jerry

by neveroffanon



Series: addicts and broken things [3]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Annie has some insights, Beth and Rio are not on the same page, F/M, Gen, How do you solve a problem like Rio?, Rio is deceptively soft, in between ep 2.11 and 2.12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 10:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18848884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveroffanon/pseuds/neveroffanon
Summary: Beth and Annie talk about gang friend.





	Jerry

“You ever worry that he’s playing with you?”

Beth looked over at her sister.  She’d stayed over for the second night in a row, nibbling at her nails like she’d done ages ago, when she was still a kid.  Beth reached up a hand and pried the fingers away from Annie’s teeth.  “You’ll make yourself sick; there’s polish on them.”

Annie pulled a face and wrapped her other hand around Beth’s own.  She bounced their hands together on her knee, and Beth waited.  She hadn’t answered the question and sometimes Annie was willing to take the hint.

This wasn’t one of those times.  “He scares me.  Gang friend.  We’ve known him... what? Barely more than a year and he’s in your pants, he’s paid for the cars and the house and Sara’s surgery.  My lawyers and Stan’s.  Do you ever think...” she trailed off and dropped backward onto the pillows with about as much violence as she did everything else.  

“Call him by his name,” Beth replied, then paused, stuck.  Was it Rio?  Christopher?  Both seemed weird now that there was a choice.  What if he was really named Andrew?  Or George?  Or Thomas?  

“What like fear of name increases fear of the thing itself?”

“Okay Potter-head,” Beth shot her sister a glance, smiling a little.  

“Come on!  That was some iconic shit right there.  Ol’ J.K. knew what she was doing,” Annie fired back, grinning.  She looked back down at their hands, in the next moment, smile wiped clean off her face. 

“I don’t worry.  I know he is,” Beth replied, finally.  She leaned into the pillows and scooted to lay on her side facing her sister.  She brought their hands up to lay near her cheek.  “He likes playing with me.  Pushing me.  Seeing how far I’ll go, what I’ll do next.  Sometimes I think he’s just bored.”

Annie inched down and lowered her voice, as though talking about him would make him pop in from the backyard.  “Then what’re you doing sis?  Stay away.  For good this time.”

“I tried that.”

“Didn’t look like you tried hard enough to me.  If I can give up Greg, you can give up gang friend.”

“You gave up on Greg a long time ago, that’s different.”

“Not so much.  Greg is a bit of an asshole, so is gang friend.  Greg is loaded and doesn’t like sharing the wealth, so is gang friend.  Greg can get it, so can gang friend.”

“ _Ugh_.  Gross Annie,” Beth sighed, flopped over to lay on her back.  She should never have brought him to the house.  This wasn’t some romance novel.  He was a literal gangster, who “handled” people when they got in his way.  He’d shot Dean just down the hall, and she’d brought him to the house for some send-off sex.  And now all she could think about, laying in her own damn bed, was what he’d looked like wrapped in her sheets.

“He runs a gang, and he’s sending you body parts in the mail like a demented stalker, and I'm the gross one?” Annie sat up and pushed at her shoulder.  “Are you listening to me?  He’s legit stalking you to make you come back to his gang.”

“Well what do you want me to _do_  Annie?  We tried getting the body back, and that went just great.  Now we have some random dead person in my flower bed.  I don’t have any choice but to go back and ask him for help.”  Saying that aloud stung.  Stung near as bad as Dean saying he was filing for divorce, as if he was the one who had reason.  

“That’s what he wants!”

“Yeah! I know Annie! And if I give him what he wants, maybe he’ll let us off the hook.”

“And the money?  Is he going to let us off for that too?”

Beth sighed and pushed herself over to look at her sister.  “You know he won’t.  Money matters to him.  More than anything else.”  If that wasn’t the truth, Beth didn’t know what was.  He could be kind to the kids, and he clearly wanted some combination of her mind and her body; she wasn’t completely blind to that fact.  But if push came to shove, he’d choose money over her ten times out of ten.  She dropped back, and closed her eyes.

Behind her eyelids, he was there, eyelashes brushing his cheeks, asking if she _wanted it_ , and then asking her to leave.  She opened her eyes.  She’d done the same.  For the kids. 

“Then get him where it hurts,” came a soft reply from beside her.  

“What?”

“Get his money,” Annie said, and clambered to sit upright.  She peered down at her, cross-legged, grinning like a goblin.  

“You have the cash, the fake cash.  You’ve got a body.  We’ll turn him into the FBI, tell them that gang friend threatened us, and boom!  He’s gone for reals this time.”  Annie bounced a little, grin gone now, but still something satisfied lingered around her mouth, pulling the corners up.   

Beth threw an elbow over her eyes and made herself think on it.  Her thoughts jittered around like she’d had ten cups of coffee. She was scared, a little, seeing how he’d looked at her earlier.  Kicking him out wasn’t supposed to have made him angry enough to start blackmailing her.  What was worse was that it was impossible to tell if this was usual for him.  Even after all this time, he was a mystery.  Was he really a violent stalker or was this him pulling her pigtails?  Could a father who was so cute with his own son really plot to have her indebted to him for the rest of her life and smile so sweetly about it?   

She dropped her arm, laughing suddenly.  “When I lost the dubby, you know what he told me?”

“No...?  Why are you laughing like that?”  Annie replied.  “What is up with you?”

“He told me I was a drug dealer...he was so angry about it.  Like he couldn’t believe I’d forgotten who I was and what I was doing,” Beth sighed, still feeling strange and amused.  She rolled to face Annie again and looked up into her sister’s bewildered face.  

“I’ve been acting like a kid with her first crush.  Since he started acting like he was my life coach, I’ve been...I’ve been running around trying to _be_  him, as if that would impress him.  Even when I decided to go back to just being Dean’s wife and get out, I dropped him like he would’ve dropped me.  Not like normal person,” Beth sighed, frowning a little.  

“I don’t want to go to jail Annie. And I don’t want to die either.  So this can’t be like last time.  We have to do it right.”

Annie looked back at her, mouth pulled into a tight frown.  “Are you going to be okay with this?  I think you really like him.  And if you chicken out, everything will end up worse than before.  You got scared before when he wanted us to off Boomer...”

“I liked him then, too.  I didn’t let that stop me,” Beth replied.  “Let’s get some sleep and go see Ruby in the morning.”

“Yeah, alright.”

Beth turned over, facing the doors.  How many times had she tried to get out, asked him when it would all be over?  Why did she keep expecting a man to have all the answers?  Men did nothing but lie and leave.  Beth huffed a sigh and curled up a little, trying not to see his face behind her eyelids.  And then had a thought so shattering that she choked on nothing.  She coughed, clearing her throat, sat up and turned to her sister.  

“Annie, when was the last time you heard from Mary Pat?”

* * *

“I need to ask you a favor.  You can add it to my tab.”

“Is that right?”  He looked up at her, eyes skittering over her face and away.  He didn’t bother to glance at the rest of her, and if that wasn’t a sign that he was angry, she didn’t know what was. 

“The girls and I are going to be looking for my rotten egg—.”

“And why do I care Elizabeth?  You out, right?”

“You want to waste time being irritated, that’s on you,” Beth dropped to sit near him, and leaned in, like he always did to her.  “But don’t come crying to me later, waving a gun in my face, because you were too pissy to help me save us both.”  She waited, then went on, “And besides, I thought you said I was in with you for a lifetime.”

He blinked, eyes on hers, lips twisting as he thought.  “Anyone ever tell you, don’t poke the bear?”

“That sounds like something good parents tell their children to keep them safe.  I didn’t have good parents,” Beth looked at him for a long moment.  “You’re angry, I get it.  But Mary Pat is a threat, and I need some help to handle it.”

“You gonna _handle_ it like you did before?”

“I’m going to take care of it.  Isn’t that what you like about me?  That I deliver what I say I will,” Beth asked, trying to go for the lightest tone she could manage.  It was hard.  He was close enough she could see the sweep of his eyelashes on his cheek, the movement of the eagle on his throat when he swallowed. 

“Let’s say I get your egg for you.  What you gonna do?  Throw my money at her til she gets gone?”

“Let me worry about that.  This my lane, my problem.”

“See I would.  But you ain’t exactly trustworthy,” Rio said quietly. 

Beth looked away from him and sighed.  “Mary Pat is a threat to me and the girls, to my kids, to everything.”  She stopped before her lips could form the words _to you_  and barreled after a pause.  “This is about safety.  If you don’t trust that I want the people I love to be safe, then you should walk away right now and don’t bother seeing me ever again.”

There was a space, where he sucked in his lip, eyes lighting on hers with an intensity that was enough to make her heart speed up.  Then it passed, and he was far away again.  Disconnected from her. 

“Let’s say I find her.  What you gonna do?  She been playin you since the first.  How you gonna deal with that?”

Beth looked down, at the spot where Dean’s ring had sat for so long.  If she never wore another wedding ring, it would be too soon.  But she didn’t regret the children. 

“Her children.”

She looked up into his face.  He was staring at her, looking as close to surprised as she had ever seen.  Then a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.  

“Mami you don’t play,” he laughed.  Beth watched him smile wider, brown eyes flashing in the sun, and tried not to find pleasure in it.  

“So you’ll help?” she asked after moment.  

“Relax.  I got you.  You unblock my number yet?”

“It’s been unblocked for weeks now.  Get the memo,” she replied.  “Text me when you find her.  And I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

“Alright.”  Beth stood, shrugged her purse onto her shoulder.  As she turned to walk away, his hand grasped hers.  She felt her heart thud once out of rhythm, and she stopped.  “What are you doing?”

“Why’d you marry him?”  He smoothed a thumb over her ring finger, face hidden, voice unreadable.  Beth shivered.  “He was safe.  He meant well.  He didn’t mind me having a kid sister who needed attention, or a drunkard for a mother.”

“You still want safe?”

“I think the kids deserve safe,” she replied.  “What I want doesn’t go into it.”  A low rumble of a noise came from his throat, and he dropped her hand.  He raised his head to look at her, eyes narrowed against the brightness of the sun, and something in her chest clenched.  She ground out a _text me_  and forced herself to walk away.  She’d told Annie that she wouldn’t choke.  So she couldn’t.

She’d play him again, however many times and in however many ways it took, until she and the rest of them were out and they were safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Elizabeth’s POV is very difficult to write, for some reason, so I hope you guys like it. In my mind, this season, she straddled this fine line between (1) understanding and being wary of the fact that Rio is a dangerous, changeable, not-quite-trustworthy friend, who had a massive amount of power over her life and (2) wishing that she could like him with no worries. And Rio recognized that and did things that would let her feel comfortable trusting him for his own reasons (and accidentally caught some feelings along the way). So now she and he are in a strange place, where they can either find a way to trust each other again (for real this time??) and figure out to juggle their other responsibilities or... they can fuck each other up some more. Thus this piece...


End file.
